As the battle over health care raged in the summer of 2009, President Obama made a very specific promise about what would become the Affordable Care Act. "When I say if you have your plan and you like it," Obama explained that June, "or you have a doctor and you like your doctor, that you […]

Barack Obama was 10 years old when legendary activist and organizer Saul Alinsky died in 1972. Nevertheless, right-wingers are frothing at the mouth at the discovery posthumously unearthed by the late Andrew Breitbart that then Illinois State Senator Obama was part of panel discussion after a 1998 play about Alinsky. But conservatives' fixation on the […]

For years, conservatives have warned that rapidly rising health care costs require the United States to repeal the Affordable Care Act, gut Medicaid and privatize Medicare. Now, the American Enterprise Institute cheerfully insists, the recent slowdown in that rate of the growth argues for precisely the same Republican policies. But far from happily revealing new […]

If nothing else, 2011 was the Year of the Great Republican Lie about taxes. Desperate to preserve low rates for the richest Americans, GOP leaders pretended tax cuts increase government revenues, pay for themselves and magically spur supposed "job creators." On Sunday, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor showed Americans can expect more of the same […]

Remember when conservatives raged after President George W. Bush issued messages marking the celebration of Kwanzaa each and every year he was in the White House? Neither do they. That's why the right-wing blogosphere is apoplectic that Barack Obama followed Bush's lead in recognizing a holiday many African-Americans celebrate each year. As he did in […]

He called for rationing Medicare, replacing it with an underfunded voucher system that would dramatically shift costs to elderly Americans. He proposed repealing the Affordable Care Act, slashing Medicaid by $1.4 trillion over the next decade and turning what's left over to the states as block grants. By 2021, his budget would leave up to […]

In December 2008, Vice President Dick Cheney delivered a stern warning to Senate Republicans opposed to President Bush's proposed bailout of the U.S. auto industry then teetering on collapse. "If we don't do this," Cheney cautioned his GOP colleagues behind closed doors, "we will be known as the party of Herbert Hoover forever." Now in […]

While much about the future of post-Qaddafi Libya remains murky, some things are already quite clear. For starters, Republican leaders and GOP White House hopefuls simply cannot bring themselves to credit President Obama in any way for the apparent success of the rebellion. Unsurprisingly, the same conservative echo chamber which cheered as the United States […]

At an event in Iowa Monday, President Obama explained that venomous political rhetoric is nothing new in American history, noting "Lincoln -- they used to talk about him almost as bad as they talk about me." Judging by the immediate and furious reaction from the conservative commentariat, right-wingers are none too happy about Obama's passing […]

Reveling in the political opportunity presented by America's economic woes, Republicans are taking President Obama to task for stating the simple truth, "much of it I inherited." While GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney charged, "It's just blame, blame, blame - It's a blame presidency," former Bush press secretary turned Fox News regular Dana Perino complained, "The […]